Topic: cost for paint job

[ronz]

Can anyone let me know what I could expect for a paint job cost. There is minimal body work to be done to my 80 ta with t-tops? I would be looking for daily driver quality. Is $4,000 enough to budget??

[Jonnyscotti]

There is a thread in the general discussion recently about this, check there.

[Clint s]

For a show quality job probally $10 minimum and up from there.  There is alot more to a paint job than the paint.  To do it right you should strip the whole car and then skim the whole thing anyway.  Then there are the hours of wet sanding too.  If you use a quality ppg paint you can have over $2000 just in paint.  I used OMNI brand paint when I did mine in my garage and had almost $1500  in paint,sand paper masking ect.  Who knows what they will find when they strip it too.

[Hitman]

You can definately get a good paint job for $4000.  It all depends on how you want the finished project.  The high end would be about $7k, but for $4k you will get a real nice one.

[bandit nz]

As other's have mentioned, 80% of a good paint finnish, lies in what is actulaly under the paint.
Even a show quality paint job is only micrograms thick, everything is in the preparation of the surface to be painted.

Ive spend months prepairing bodys for painting and then just a day painting them, all to get a really sharp looking paint job.

Im no golden gun, but like many on here if your willing to put in the labour and hard yards in, sanding and preping, youll save a mint and ive managed to produce some very cool paint jobs even using metalic and iridesent 2 stage laquer paints.

So shop around, have a think about doing at least some of it yourself and go to it.

Best of luck and dont forget to post some pics on here.     

[Clint s]

Exactly most of the cost is in materials, prep work and the finish work.  I really does not cost alot to "paint a car,  but if you do not do the proper prep work and use decent quality paints even the best paint job will not last.  So yes I agree you could probally get a decent paint job for around $4000 and if your car is a driver, like mine, you will probally be very happy with it, but some of the great painters like Jason D. over at TAC will tell you it costs well over $10000 for a show quality jobs that are expertly prepped and finished. He takes off every removable piece so there is no masking and his are works of art.

[bandit nz]

Clint is dead on, the more you can strip off the car in trim etc, the better the finnish.

The last three cars ive done, were just drivable body shells with a dash when I finshed stiping them.
No trim, no doors, no glass etc etc, the last car I did was an 81 stretch Cadillac fleetwood limousine, I even dropped out the fabric bow type head linner and the entire sun roof system.

Had to take off the padded exterior vynal top and strip all the body filler off the roof and im no panal beater or trained car painter by comparison your TA will be a breeze .

It took 9 hours to put the hood linning back in and 6 weeks of steady work to put the car back together, but that was three years ago and that car still looks like a million dollars